New Movie Channel Launches in Russia

As confirmation of the growing Russian appetite for cinema, new movie channel Kino TV has launched to a trial audience base of 500,000 with ambitions to expand to 4 million households over the next nine months. To date, the channel is licensed to offer 2,000 houfs of content, predominately film festival coverage, criticism, documentaries and indie movies from Eurasia. Russia's film culture has long been home-based after the rise of piracy in the '90s. The concern is that a new way to watch films at home could cut into the theatrical model. However, there's also an argument that the very existence of a channel such as Kino TV speaks to the audience interest in more high brow theatrical fare.